Everyday Spirituality

Trauma of Torture

While reading The Searchers, by Glen Frankel, I had to turn off my Nook. The book depicts the horrors of an Indian raid on early Americans in Texas. Members of the Comanche tribe attacked and tortured a group of settlers. Cynthia Ann Parker was taken captive at the age of nine. She was rescued 24 years later, but wanted to return to her Comanche family.

Attack and torture are phenomena that make my stomach contort and tighten; gagging the humanity of human beings. Yet, professional physicians and surgeons poke or cut off body parts every day. The recipients, and movie stars, who survive are heroic.

I ponder the result of Christ Jesus’ experience as found in 21st Century Science and Health: “The last supreme moment of mockery, desertion, and torture added to an overwhelming sense of the magnitude of Jesus’ work. From his lips was wrenched the awful cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[1] If a human parent was asked this heart-broken question, it would deny the justice and love of whom Jesus knew to be his Maker. Jesus appealed to his divine Principle, the God who is Love, and to himself, Love’s pure idea. Had Life, Truth, and Love forsaken him in his highest demonstration? This was a startling question. No! God and Christ Jesus must remain united or that hour would be deprived of its mighty blessing for human beings.”

A star gymnastFilm, The Gabby Douglas Story (2014), captured many of the emotions that surely were experienced before medals were earned at the 2008 Olympics. Gabby’s family, already at a level of impoverishment, sacrificed for Gabby Douglas to continue training. And, although tempted, Gabby didn’t give up.

Making the Bible practicalReading the Bible practically requires thought. This is different from reading the Bible emotionally or as if the words are what God said. The Bible isn’t a history book and God doesn’t speak human words. God is Spirit and communicates spiritually, mentally.
The David and Goliath story foun

Experience today's prayerMy husband just returned from a trip out west. In Seattle, Washington, he boarded an airplane after 6 a.m. and was in Albany, New York before 6 p.m. Seattle clock time was 3 p.m.
A nine hour trip that took him 3,000 miles. Doug went from sixty degrees Fahrenheit to one degree. From flowering rhod

Poetry and traditionAsh-Wednesday
by T S Eliot
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn

The questionable big bangBible scholars recognize two distinct accounts of creation in Genesis. In the first chapter of Genesis through chapter 2:3, God renders the common noun, Elohim.
As for the second account, the beginning of human history, God renders Yahweh in the Hebrew.
For right reasoning, the two accounts ca